Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

OpenTracing VS Apache SkyWalking

Compare OpenTracing VS Apache SkyWalking and see what are their differences

OpenTracing logo OpenTracing

Consistent, expressive, vendor-neutral APIs for distributed tracing and context propagation.

Apache SkyWalking logo Apache SkyWalking

Apache SkyWalking is an open-source application performance monitoring solution that provides tracking, metrics analysis, service mesh observability, alarm, and visualization.
  • OpenTracing Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-27
  • Apache SkyWalking Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-21

OpenTracing features and specs

  • Vendor Agnosticism
    OpenTracing provides a standardized API that abstracts away the underlying tracing implementation, allowing users to switch between different tracing vendors or tools without significant changes to their code.
  • Interoperability
    By using a consistent API across various services, OpenTracing enables better interoperability and easier integration between different components of a distributed system.
  • Ease of Use
    With its well-documented interfaces, OpenTracing simplifies the initial setup and use of distributed tracing in applications, making it more accessible to developers.
  • Context Propagation
    OpenTracing provides flexible and efficient context propagation mechanisms that help in tracking requests as they travel through different services in a distributed system.

Possible disadvantages of OpenTracing

  • Limited Feature Set
    OpenTracing focuses on providing a minimalistic API, which might lack advanced features offered by some proprietary tracing solutions.
  • Steep Learning Curve for Beginners
    For developers who are new to distributed tracing, understanding the concepts and effectively utilizing OpenTracing can be initially challenging without prior knowledge.
  • Dependency Overhead
    Integrating OpenTracing into an application introduces additional dependencies, which can increase the complexity of the application stack.
  • System Overhead
    Although it aims to minimize performance impact, using OpenTracing can still add some overhead to the system, especially if not configured correctly.

Apache SkyWalking features and specs

  • Comprehensive Observability
    Apache SkyWalking provides end-to-end observability of distributed systems including service, process, and container metrics, as well as logs and events, enabling holistic monitoring and performance optimization.
  • Distributed Tracing
    SkyWalking offers robust distributed tracing capabilities that allow users to trace requests end-to-end across various services and platforms, aiding in root cause analysis and performance monitoring.
  • Open Source
    Being an open-source project under the Apache umbrella, SkyWalking benefits from community contributions, regular updates, and improvements, offering transparency and flexibility.
  • Wide Protocol Support
    SkyWalking supports a wide range of protocols and platforms, such as HTTP, gRPC, Dubbo, and supports multiple languages including Java, .NET, Python, and more, making it versatile across different tech stacks.
  • Dashboarding and Visualization
    The platform provides powerful dashboards and visualization tools, allowing users to easily interpret data, create custom dashboards, and derive insights from visual metrics.

Possible disadvantages of Apache SkyWalking

  • Complex Setup
    Setting up and configuring SkyWalking can be complex, especially for organizations unfamiliar with distributed observability tools, potentially requiring significant time and expertise.
  • Scalability Challenges
    While SkyWalking is designed for distributed systems, scaling its deployment for very large environments might present challenges, necessitating careful architectural planning.
  • Resource Intensive
    SkyWalking can be resource-intensive, as it collects a large amount of telemetry data, which might lead to high overhead on system resources like CPU and memory.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its comprehensive feature set and various configurations, there can be a steep learning curve associated with effectively utilizing SkyWalking, particularly for new users.
  • Limited UI Customization
    The user interface, while functional, offers limited customization options compared to some commercial observability solutions, which might be a limitation for users needing highly tailored dashboards.

OpenTracing videos

OpenTelemetry: Overview & Backwards Compatibility of OpenTracing + OpenCensus - Steve Flanders

Apache SkyWalking videos

Chapter04 Session10 - Apache Skywalking by Sheng Wu

More videos:

  • Review - Apache SkyWalking | Top 42 Alternatives of Apache SkyWalking
  • Review - Observability in Service Mesh Powered by Envoy and Apache SkyWalking - Sheng Wu & Lizan Zhou

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OpenTracing and Apache SkyWalking)
Monitoring Tools
49 49%
51% 51
Cloud
100 100%
0% 0
Log Management
0 0%
100% 100
Dev Ops
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using OpenTracing and Apache SkyWalking. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, OpenTracing should be more popular than Apache SkyWalking. It has been mentiond 28 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OpenTracing mentions (28)

  • OpenTelemetry Metrics meets Azure
    OpenTelemetry is easy to use. I already have experience with metrics and OpenTracing. I am also a bit biased because I really like the concept of metrics. Do you find it easy to use? Please leave a comment below. I really want to know your opinion. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • OpenTelemetry Journey #01 - Important concepts
    First of all, let's start with the basics. There are some important concepts to be clarified before we dive into the OpenTelemetry world. The vast majority of the naming conventions and concepts are from projects and papers that inspired OpenTelemetry, such as OpenTracing, OpenCensus and Dapper. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • OpenTelemetry Journey #00 - Introduction to OpenTelemetry
    OpenTelemetry it's a result from the merge of two important projects that are now archived: OpenTracing and OpenCensus. The project is incubated in Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and has a strong community behind it. The CNCF is part of the Linux Foundation and hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes and Prometheus. Currently, OpenTelemetry is the second... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems: Strategies and Case Studies
    However, ensuring fault tolerance in distributed systems is not at all easy. These systems are complex, with multiple nodes or components working together. A failure in one node can cascade across the system if not addressed timely. Moreover, the inherently distributed nature of these systems can make it challenging to pinpoint the exact location and cause of fault - that is why modern systems rely heavily on... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Distributed Tracing with OpenTelemetry - Part I
    OpenTelemetry was born from the merger of two other standards that decided to unify forces instead of competing with each other; these projects were OpenTracing and OpenCensus. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

Apache SkyWalking mentions (18)

  • I gave up on self-hosted Sentry
    A good APM tool I’ve been using for a few years is Apache Skywalking: https://skywalking.apache.org/ It might not do everything Sentry does but it definitely has helped with tracking down some issues, even production ones and runs in a fairly manageable setup (in comparison to how long even the Sentry self-hosted Docker Compose file is). What’s more, if you want, you can even use regular PostgreSQL as the backing... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • OpenTelemetry Tracing in < 200 lines of code
    > I maintain that any platform that isn’t using some sort of tracing system is practically negligent in their engineering duty. For some, it's difficult because many of the self-hostable out there are rather complex and have high requirements, like https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted/blob/master/docker-compose.yml but it's not exactly ideal either. I wonder what other good options are out there, something... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • 14 Monitoring Tools for Full-Stack Developers
    Apache SkyWalking is an open-source APM tool meant for distributed systems. It has support for distributed tracing, agents in multiple languages, and support for an eBPF agent. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Release Radar · May 2024 Edition: Major updates from the open source community
    Are you working on microservices, cloud native, and container-based architectures? Then you need to check out Apache Skywalking. It's an Application Performance Monitoring (APM) system, that provides monitoring, tracing, and diagnosing capabilities for distributed systems in Cloud Native architectures. This latest update has hundreds of changes including support for Java 21 runtime, new functions and parameters,... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Enhancing API Observability Series (Part 3): Tracing
    When choosing distributed tracing tools, considerations include your technology stack, business requirements, and monitoring complexity. Zipkin, SkyWalking, and OpenTelemetry are popular distributed tracing solutions, each with its unique features. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing OpenTracing and Apache SkyWalking, you can also consider the following products

Prometheus - An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.

Grafana - Data visualization & Monitoring with support for Graphite, InfluxDB, Prometheus, Elasticsearch and many more databases

Open Telemetry - An observability framework for cloud-native software.

OpenCensus - Application and Data, Monitoring, and Monitoring Tools

SigNoz - Open source alternative to Datadog

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.